Wireless devices use one or more antennas to receive RF signals. However, signals received by an antenna may be affected by a transmission path taken by the signals, as well as by characteristics of the receive antenna. For example, the transmission path may comprise obstacles, such as, for example, buildings and/or trees that reflect and/or attenuate transmitted signals. In addition to obstacles in the transmission path, a receive antenna may also not be tuned to receive the frequencies for the desired channel For example, actual receive circuitry may deviate from the designed receive circuitry due to tolerances of real-world devices and/or manufacturing deviations. Additionally, the receive antenna may also receive interfering signals in the desired channel that may reduce the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby increasing the difficulty of demodulating the desired signal. If the interfering signals are strong enough, the receiving wireless device may not be able to properly receive and de-modulate the received signal.
Some wireless communication protocols may require use of multiple antennas for reception and transmission, where each of the multiple antennas may communicate received RF signals to separate RF front ends, and where the multiple antennas may transmit at the same time. However, simultaneous transmission via multiple antennas and simultaneous operation of a plurality of RF front ends utilizes additional power consumption that may be generally undesirable, especially if the wireless device's power source is a battery.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.